With the application and development of image searching technology, the image searching technology based on visual feature is the main stream image searching technology. Implementation of the image searching technology based on visual features requires pre-establishing a visual feature based image searching database. Specifically, FIG. 1 illustrates a flowchart of an example method for establishing the visual feature based image searching database.
At 102, a feature extraction system is established. The feature extraction system defines visual feature templates to be extracted from images.
At 104, visual features are extracted from multiple images in the image searching database by utilizing the established feature extraction system. An image may be represented by one or more visual features extracted from the image.
At 106, the visual features corresponding to each image are used as index keyword to establish an inverted index to generate the visual feature based image searching database. The workflow of establishing the visual feature based image searching database is thus completed.
Based on the operations from 102 to 106, the visual feature based image searching database is established. A server may perform image searching based on the visual feature based image searching database. FIG. 2 illustrates a flowchart of an example method for searching images in the image searching database by the server.
At 202, the server receives an image searching request submitted by a client terminal. At 202, the server may include the visual feature based image searching database or the server may access the visual feature based image searching database. The image searching request includes an image for a search that a user requests.
At 204, the server extracts visual features from the image for the search received in the image searching request. At 204, the method that the visual features are extracted from the image for search may be the same as the method that the visual features are extracted from the image when the visual feature based image searching data base is established.
At 206, the server based on the extracted visual features, according to the established invert index, searches a set of images corresponding to the extracted visual feature from the visual feature based image searching database.
At 208, the server sends search results to the client terminal that sends the image searching request. The operation that the server searches images is then complete.
Based on the operations from 204 to 208, the server returns a set of images requested by the user based on the visual feature based image searching database.
In actual applications, the above visual feature based image searching technology may be implemented through creating a new visual feature based searching engine instead of using text searching engines that servers with searching functions are normally equipped with. Accordingly, the server resources cannot be effectively utilized.